It’s been almost four months since arriving in England. We moved into a flat on the 30th of August. Can I get something as fundamental as a working phone line in that time? No that’s apparently too much to ask for. I’ve received some poor customer in my day but BT takes the cake.
It took me weeks just to get through to someone at BT to order the line. Once I got through they argued that there were no phone lines to the property. The property has a number of working lines. Then they argued that the previous tenants hadn’t cancelled their account. The previous tenants were long gone and had in fact cancelled their account weeks if not months before. Finally the line started working almost by accident it seems. Our ability to make and receive calls would come and go but at least the line could support an Internet connect through Virgin Media using DSL.
Yesterday the Internet connection no longer worked. I originally appreciated Virgin’s customer service but it seems that extends only as long as you are trying to become a customer and ceases once you’re signed up. No one from Virgin will help me without me first calling a special number with a per-minute charge. I figured its probably a BT problem anyway since the Internet connection relies on a working phone line so I called BT. I eventually got through to someone at BT only to be informed that the phone number I quoted is not active and they have no record of me ever opening an account.
So now we have no telephone and no Internet connection and I have to start all over again. Four months down the road.
Is this really the kind of service British folks put up with? Canada isn’t perfect but it was never this bad.
End of rant.